Are EDU and GOV Back Links Better Than Other Extensions

There’s a notion that floats around that links from educational (.edu) or government (.gov) institution websites are better than from other “.com” sites. First, it might be a good idea to take a look at what the representatives from Google say about this issue:

In general, I would like to add that no, backlinks from .EDU domains generally do not get “additional credibility from Google.” Because of that, the whole topic of working especially hard to talk webmasters of these domains into linking to your sites seems a bit problematic. Why not just create unique and compelling content and let it speak for itself?

-John MU google groups

Weary, Yahoo links are helpful because they’re high PageRank, but that’s the only reason; there’s no special “Yahoo boost” or edu-boost or gov-boost. Those links just tend to be higher quality.

–Matt Cutts

Now the above comments may simply be misleading because Google doesn’t want to admit that EDU and you the backlinks are better. But, let’s take them at their face value and assume that the thing that makes EDU and UV backlinks good are the fact that these sites have a high page rank lots of authority. Therefore, EDU and UV links would be no better than.com links of the same authority. However, you may be able to get some EDU links for a small price because there are guys who will create them for you on the web.

There are educational institutions that have a relatively lax policy in terms of allowing postings on their domain. By exploiting these liberal policies, web savvy salespeople are able to offer you links from EDU sites. I have seen lots of conversation on the Internet about this issue with some arguing that the website of a professor is worth far more than the website of an undergraduate student. However, when I think about this how does Google know who is a professor and who is a student?

The only differentiator between their two sites on the EDU domain would be that the professor has a number of back links to his site. His colleagues across the world in the same field are linking to his research and commentary. The students website on the other hand, is nothing more than a Facebook page with pictures from the last drunken party he attended. No one is linking to him.

So I have to conclude from the reading I’ve done and the commentary from the Google representatives that the following is accurate:

1. It is good to get back links from EDU and GOV sites not because of the domain extension but because the sites have high authority for their top level domains

2. If you do purchase links to be posted on such sites or place them yourself, it will be critical for you to have a back link to the specific page on which your links have been posted.

In other words, if you have links at the page joebloe.harvard.edu.com pointing to your money page, then in order to make your links valuable, you will need to back linking campaign to joebloe.harvard.edu.com to give the page some credibility and those back links on value.